Hotel Touraine (1897-1966) in Boston, Massachusetts, was a residential hotel on the corner of Tremont Street and Boylston Street, near the Boston Common. The architecture firm of Winslow and Wetherell designed the 11-story building in the Jacobethan style, constructed of "brick and limestone;"[1] its "baronial" appearance was "patterned inside and out after a 16th-century chateau of the dukes of Touraine."[2] It had dining rooms and a circulating library.[3][4] Owners included Joseph Reed Whipple and George A. Turain.[5][6]
Directly across the street were the clandestine district headquarters of the Boston Communist Party mentioned in Herbert Philbrick's 1952 book "I Led 3 Lives".
Among the guests: explorer Ernest Shackleton, boxer Max Baer, actor Stanley Bell,[7] Diamond Jim Brady,[8] George Gershwin,[9] Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow,[10] Pietro Mascagni,[11] Mitch Miller,[12] Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,[13] railroad builder and operator Sir William Cornelius Van Horne,[14] and Henry Bradford Endicott.[15] Events included an exhibition in the 1960s of the Boston Negro Artists Association,[16] and performances by the "Theater Company of Boston."[17] The hotel closed in 1966 and became an apartment building.[18][19]
Images
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Detail of 1890s map of Boston, showing Hotel Touraine -
The hotel's fleet of chauffeured cars, 1906 -
Hotel library, ca.1910 -
Hotel Touraine (at right), Masonic Temple (at left), 1903 -
Former Hotel Touraine (at right), Masonic Temple (at left), 2010
References
edit- ^ U.S. Dept. of the Interior. National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form: Boston Theatre Multiple Resource Area. 1980. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000273_text
- ^ Kenney, Michael. "The secret city." Boston Globe, 24 Jan 1998
- ^ Manuel D. Lopez. "Books and Beds: Libraries in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Hotels." Journal of Library History (1974-1987), Vol. 9, No. 3 (Jul., 1974)
- ^ Joseph Winfred Spenceley. A descriptive checklist of the etched & engraved book-plates. Boston: Troutsdale Press, 1905
- ^ About the farm: an illustrated description of the New Boston Dairy and other industries at Valley View, Muzzey, and Hutchinson farms, which are a part of the supply department of Young's Hotel, Parker House, and Hotel Touraine. Boston: Printed for J. R. Whipple Company, 1910
- ^ Boston Globe, 16 May 1987
- ^ Boston Globe, 03 Aug 2003
- ^ "Ask the Globe." Boston Globe, 11 Sep 1996
- ^ Boston Globe, 16 June 1996
- ^ Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow. American Art News, Vol. 20, No. 8 (Dec. 3, 1921), p. 6
- ^ Advertisement for Simplex Piano Player in: Success (magazine), v.6, no.104, 1903
- ^ Dyer, Richard. "Why it's still fun to sing along with Mitch Miller." Boston Globe, 16 June 1996
- ^ Letter to Harold J. Laski, June 14, 1922
- ^ Walter Vaughan, The Life and Work of Sir William Van Horne (New York: The Century Co., 1920), p. 273.
- ^ "Shoe and Leather Reporter". 137. Shoe and Leather Reporter Company. 1920: 50–52. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Boston Negro Artists Association later became the "Boston Afro-American Artists." Boston Globe, 24 July 1988
- ^ Boston Globe, 18 Apr 1980
- ^ "Ask the Globe." Boston Globe, 27 Mar 1988
- ^ Boston Redevelopment Authority. (1990), Hinge Block Plan, OL 23303435M
External links
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- Bostonian Society:
- Photo of construction projects at the corner of Boylston and Tremont Streets, 1896
- Photo of construction of Hotel Touraine, Tremont and Boylston Streets, 1897
- Boston Public Library. Max Baer looks thoughtful in his room at the Hotel Touraine, photo, 1935
